The Leader's Guide to Storytelling

by Stephen Denning

  I have a dream today.

  I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

  This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.15

  The speech describes a situation in some unspecified future when the nature of race relations is radically different from what it was in 1963. The speech doesn't contain a coherent set of causally linked actions showing how the United States was going to get from where it was in 1963 to the future situation so movingly depicted in the speech. This is not to criticize the speech but rather to suggest that an inherent characteristic of a successful speech about the future is likely to be the lack of specificity and the evocativeness of the language.

  Those two examples are from politics. By way of further illustration, here's a less well-known instance of the same phenomenon in the commercial sphere. It's Walt Disney's vision for Disneyland when he was trying to convey to top management and outside investors the vision for this innovative project:

  The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge. It will be a place for parents and children to spend pleasant times in one another's company, a place for teachers and pupils to discover greater ways of understanding and education. Here the older generation can recapture the nostalgia of days gone by, and the younger generation can savor the challenge of the future. Here will be the wonders of Nature and Man for all to see and understand. Disneyland will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and hard facts that have created America. And it will be uniquely equipped to dramatize these dreams and facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all the world. Disneyland will be something of a fair, an exhibition, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts, and a showplace of beauty and magic. It will be filled with the accomplishments, the joys and hopes of the world we live in. And it will remind us and show us how to make those wonders part of our lives.16

  Once again the crafter of the vision has used simple but evocative language to conjure up an image of what Disneyland might turn out to be.

  All of these visions demonstrate a high degree of linguistic skill in sketching evocative futures. If they are effective, it is because the listeners themselves put flesh on the skeleton: the listeners imagine the detail of how they are going to get to these futures, prompted by the evocative pictures sketched in the vision. The catch is that the crafting of such evocative poetic visions requires consummate artistry. That is why, for most speakers, the springboard story will be a more practical option.

  Like the springboard story, an evocative future story has the advantage that as the future actually unfolds with all its unexpected twists and turns, the listeners can remold the narrative in their imaginations on the fly. An evocative narrative is thus continuously updated in the context as it evolves.

  Evocative future stories that are told and retold become part of the common mind. It's the unified expression of many voices playing on the same theme. A successful vision is a dream, but it's a dream with a twist: it's a dream that is shared. As the Brazilian proverb goes, when we dream alone, it's just a dream: when we dream together, it's already the beginning of a new reality. Thus, when we share the same dream, we all begin to participate in it.

  Avoid Cliché

  The effort to craft an evocative, inspiring vision often stretches the drafter's linguistic skills and critical ability to grasp how the resulting language will be viewed by those for whom it is intended. When that process breaks down, you get verbiage like the mission statement mentioned earlier, the one that was cited with approval by Stephen Covey.

  Here's another example of a vision statement, this one for an automobile company. It is cited with approval in Gary Yukl's Leadership in Organizations:17

  We will create an empowered organization to unleash our creativity and focus our energies in cooperative effort; it will enable us to develop and build the best personal vehicles in the world, vehicles that people will treasure owning because they are fun to use, they are reliable, they keep people comfortable and safe, and they enable people to have freedom of movement in their environment without harming it.

  Just think about that vision for a moment. It seems more concrete than the first one, but it piles together a set of tired clichés of management jargon: “empowered organization,” “unleash our creativity,” “cooperative effort,” “the best personal vehicles in the world,” “vehicles that people will treasure owning,” and “freedom of movement in the environment without harming it.” If the meaning of any one of these clichés had been unpacked so that the practical implications were made apparent, along with some indication of serious organizational intent to make and implement choices, then the vision would start to have some meaning. But at this level of generality, such a vision is likely to generate in a worker in the production line little but cynicism.

  Yukl praises the vision's flexibility, noting that its environmental commitment is compatible with the company's producing gas-guzzling SUVs as well as fusion-powered air cars as in the movie Back to the Future.18 But that's precisely the problem. The vision is infinitely flexible to cover whatever the company might decide to do. It confirms that no hard choices have been made and thus communicates no direction for the future.

  Keep It Simple

  It's also a good idea to keep the vision simple. One reason for this is that the human capacity to absorb multiple elements isn't unlimited. Research indicates that the mind can hold only seven elements at the same time, plus or minus two.19 Thus the mental simulations that we spontaneously make of the future are not very elaborate. Gary Klein suggests that there are rarely more than three causal factors, and rarely more than six transition states.20 Kees van der Heijden reports that the most effective business ideas contain no more than ten elements.21

  Actual reality may be more complicated, but the story is simplified by chunking together groups of actions. For instance, a computer program might have millions of lines of code, but millions of steps won't fit in the human brain. To understand the program, we group the main actions into a limited number of steps.22

  So when you're telling a future story, keep in mind the limitation of your listeners' working memory. For the story to be useful, it must be neither too detailed nor too general. The simpler your story is, the more likely that people will comprehend and remember it.

  Work Backward from an Image of the Future

  When he was director of planning in the Apollo space program, Edward Lindaman discovered that when people create action plans by working backward from a preferred future, they take less time to plan, increase enthusiasm for the plan, and develop a more realistic simulation of the challenge.23 This insight can be incorporated into corporate planning processes and applied to avoid failure, as well as to achieve success.

  Here are some examples of leaders who invited their audiences to work backward from a future state:

  Choosing a future state: When Jack Welch took over as chairman of General Electric in 1979, he described a simple future state that he believed was essential for GE's success: “We will be #1 or #2” in each sector where the company chose to compete. He proposed getting to this state by the three methods: fix, close, or sell. He exemplified the values of speed, simplicity, self-confidence, and stretch. He promoted radical decentralization—everyone should be a leader. Although his statements were not in themselves fully formed stories, his message prompted the managers and staff of GE to develop stories to make the vision happen. GE in due course became one of the most successful growth companies for the next two decades.

 
; Using a familiar format to communicate a future fiction: Sometimes it's hard to make the future situation plausible. One interesting device to achieve this was used by Melinda Bickerstaff, chief knowledge officer of Bristol-Myers Squibb, to show the importance of knowledge management to the senior executives. She prepared an article describing a situation several years into the future where the firm had successfully implemented knowledge management and gained substantial financial benefits. The article was printed in the distinctive color and style of the Financial Times—a favorite newspaper of the top management. The surprise of seeing themselves unexpectedly featured in an article in the Financial Times was sufficient to get the executives thinking seriously about the possibility and helped spark a discussion: Why not?

  Make the Future Story Positive in Tone

  Like springboard stories (and unlike knowledge-sharing stories), future stories that lead to action are generally upbeat. This is because future stories intend to lead people to a desired future, and this desired future is typically filled with positive characteristics. Listeners will be happier, richer, more fulfilled, better off, whatever.

  Nevertheless, negative future stories can also play a role as a kind of burning platform that gets people's attention, shakes them out of their complacency, and forces them to begin thinking of alternatives. Here are some instances where negative stories have been used:

  “Near-death” experiences: When a company is facing a real crisis, it's easier to get people's attention. Thus, when Lou Gerstner took over IBM in 1993, the company had lost so much money in the five preceding years that its very survival was in doubt. In a context of dire crisis, Gerstner was able to get people's attention and have them consider basic change they might well have recoiled from had the company been doing well or even just getting by.

  Y2K: The stories of impending computer systems meltdown occasioned by entry into year 2000 prompted significant investment in upgrading antiquated systems. Whether the risk of disaster in the looming crisis was overstated, the wide dissemination of early warnings did lead to large-scale preventive action.

  Even when the future story is negative, as in these cases, the object is generally to take preventive action so that things end well. Hence, the real object of even a negative future story is to grab people's attention so as to get to a positive future story.

  Link the Future Story to the Listeners' Current Mind-Set

  Like all other stories, a future story needs to offer something unusual, something unexpected; otherwise, there's no interest in it. But effective future stories also need to have enough connection with current mental models to make them plausible to a critical mass of the listeners. When listeners can't see the connection between their current worldview and the future story, they will experience the story as unrealistic—as science fiction. It will end up on the shelf without creating much effect. The crux is finding the right balance between the known and the new. Erring on the side of the known will make the story boring. Erring on the side of the new will make the story so outlandish that it is unintelligible.24

  Linkage can be accomplished by plugging into whatever the audience is already to a certain extent thinking about. Thus, the audience may have in the back of their minds some aspirations that have never been fully articulated. Or they may have some worries that have scarcely been put into words. These nebulous dreams and fears can be the basis for developing useful future stories.

  In a scenario exercise in 1990 for a company involved in the manufacture of machinery for microchip production, a senior manager expressed worry about the depth of a possible recession. By pursuing the implications of what would happen if there was a deeper-than-expected recession, the company began to see that the success of its investment program depended on the emerging recession being shallow. On further review, the company decided that it wasn't willing to gamble its entire future on a shallow recession. As it turned out, the recession was deeper than expected, and the company's foresight enabled it to survive. The credibility of the negative scenario that saved the day, however, rested on at least one senior manager's being already worried about that possibility.25

  Exemplify the Future State

  Given the difficulties of telling a credible future story, keep in mind that the performance of the story can add significantly to the impact. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, not only talked about the future independence India could achieve through peaceful means; he exemplified trustworthiness and moral responsibility in his own frugal, nonviolent lifestyle. Gandhi's fasting and dress became symbols of the self-sacrifice and discipline it takes to change the world.

  In the commercial realm, Steve Jobs personifies Apple's mission to produce computers, mp3 players, phones and other electronic gadgets that are considered cool. Jobs exemplifies a “think different” lens through which to view the world. He embodies the mission in his own person through becoming the ideal of the imaginative, tech-savvy, entrepreneur.

  Use Role Playing to Develop a Realistic Future Story

  Research reveals that experts are not good at forecasting decisions in conflict situations. Such conflicts are complex and often involve several rounds of action and reaction, which makes them difficult to predict. Fortunately, there is an effective alternative: role playing. For conflict situations, research shows that role playing yields future stories that are more accurate than the forecasts of experts.26

  The role playing needs to take place in a realistic manner. After receiving brief descriptions of their roles, participants read about the situation. Partisans meet with confederates to discuss strategy and act out interactions with the other parties. While encouraged to improvise, participants must stay within their roles. Typically ten independent simulations will be sufficient, but more can be conducted if the decisions vary substantially across simulations. Predictions are based on the frequency with which decisions occur.

  Role playing is especially useful in that it can lead to predictions that are not obvious to experts. One paradoxical result, however, is that role playing then generates probable outcomes that are politically unacceptable and hence ignored. For example, the U.S. military used role playing as part of its planning for the Vietnam War and correctly concluded that moderate bombing was the worst strategy the country could follow. Unfortunately, top government officials did not believe the conclusion and proceeded with what seemed reasonable to them.27

  Telling Different Kinds of Future Story

  Informal Statements of Intention or Descriptions of Risk

  Most future stories are informal in nature and concern intentions or predictions. When the intentions are articulated by people in authority, whether from position or expertise, their stories can have a large impact in the marketplace as other players adjust their conduct to anticipate the new situation.

  Plans

  A plan is a description of a set of activities that are to take place in some finite future period and may include their timing, costs, benefits, and risks. It is told with a greater or lesser degree of formality. A plan may or may not be expressed in a traditional narrative form. It describes a set of events that are causally linked, particularly actions and their timing and cost, although typically not as a very interesting narrative. Plans deal with what is expected to happen. Interesting stories deal with the unexpected.

  Premortems

  Once people have developed a plan, they tend to feel too confident in it, particularly if they are not highly experienced. Requests for the authors to review the plan for flaws are generally ineffective: the authors' investigation is half-hearted because they really want to believe in the plan. A premortem can be used to deal with this problem. Planners are asked to imagine that it is months into the future and their plan has been carried out and it has failed. That is all they know. They have to explain why they think it failed. “Of course, it wasn't going to work because….” The idea is to break the emotional attachment people have to the plan by taking on the challenge of showing their creativity and competen
ce by identifying possible sources of breakdown.28

  Business Models

  A business model is a story that explains how an organization will operate. It explains “the theory of the business.” It's a story set in the present or near future. The narrative is tied to numbers as the elements in the business model are quantified. The business model answers questions like these: Who is the customer? And what does the customer value? How do we make money in this business? What is the underlying economic logic that shows how we can deliver value to customers at an appropriate cost?29 Its validity depends on its narrative logic (Does the story hang together?) and quantitative logic (Do the numbers add up?).

  Strategies

  Strategy has become an ambiguous concept. In its most common application, a strategy is a business model with the addition of the dimension of the competitors. It describes how the organization's activities are different from those of its rivals. A strategy is not about any one core competence, critical resource, or key success factor: it is about the whole system of activities and their interrelationship, not just a collection of parts.30